


No Plan

by transishimaru



Category: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Homophobia, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 12:35:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18135815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transishimaru/pseuds/transishimaru
Summary: short fic, au where ishimaru is the one who commits a murder in ch2. makoto's pov.





	No Plan

It’s coming down to the wire now, like a bomb ticking in your head. It seems pretty obvious at this point (to you at least) that Taka is the one who did it. 

It’s just not clear  _why_.

And it also seems obvious at this point (to you, only to you, and maybe Kyoko) that Mondo helped. But you don’t think that part begs an explanation. 

Ishimaru is not an especially good liar. He cares too much about the truth, and honesty. You can’t decide if that would have made him a fantastic politician or a bad one. Too bad he won’t live to find out. 

You try scrolling through the finer details in your court record again, and can see Kyoko’s doing the same as Hina and Hifumi argue about something inane in the background. This murder wasn’t premeditated, and something in that specificity is what’s making it hard to pin on Ishimaru. You can’t make an assertion like that on a gut feeling. 

Oh.

The words. The word _ing_. How did you miss it?

Taka is looking right at you when you say it. “You, Ishimaru,” you say, can’t bring yourself to use the nickname when you’re doing this. “You killed her.” Everyone is very, very quiet. And you bring up the note Toko had in her hand, the one with smudged ink, the one that ends in  _kyoudai_. “And the person who helped you to cover up your crime, was -”

“It was me.” Mondo. “I did it.” Yeah. You have kind of figured. “All of it.” What? “Bitch set me up. She found out I did something stupid and set it up so Ishimaru would catch me, so I killed her.”

Someone, probably Hiro, is saying that it all makes sense. But you have run through the crime in your head, accounted for all variables, and there’s no way Mondo did this. Even his reasoning is lame, ambiguous, lacking all reason. What is it they say - that in all lies is a kernel of truth? 

So Toko did set them up; one, or both of them. Was she planning on killing them herself?

“I know what you’re thinking, Makoto,” Kyoko calls. “And you’re right, in a manner of speaking. Taka’s reaction was, in part, self-defense.” 

In a manner of speaking.  _Oh._  “She was…blackmailing you?”

You’ve never seen someone’s face literally go the color of paper, but here it is now. It’s hideous, unnatural on him. His usual fire is snuffed out. “It’s about your secret, isn’t it? She was going to use it against you.” 

His face is pallor and sweat, like someone who’s just thrown up, and that’s how the words tumble. “She said she’d ruin me unless I did whatever she wanted. Her homework, her laundry, to spy on Byakuya -” your mentioned classmate gains a sudden interest and snaps. No one cares. “I couldn’t have that - that secret, I couldn’t risk blackmail, I -”

“But you could kill her?” Hina asks. She’s shaken. “What secret could possibly be so bad you’d risk murder to keep it from getting out?!”

What, indeed? It’s silent. You can hear the people around you breathe, Ishimaru’s head bowed in quiet penance. 

Monokuma breaks it. He would. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he snaps, “Kiyotaka likes boys!” Taka, poor Taka, looks like he’s going to have a heart attack. Hina stutters out a note of surprise. Someone asks if they’ve heard right. “He’s gay!” the bear shouts, arms thrown up over his head. “Queer! A faerie! Straight as a rainbow! A friend of Dorothy’s! Pierce his right ear, this guy’s a -”

“We get it,” Kyoko snaps, but the sentence finishes in your ears, finishes in everyone’s. It’s not the idea, it’s the word. It’s outing someone and the guilt on your shoulders that you remember last breakfast, your classmates talking when he was late to come in.  _Do you think Ishimaru’s -?_

“But that’s not worth killing over!” Hina cries, and she is crying. “What’s wrong with people knowing?” 

Sakura shifts, near imperceptibly, but her arms are uncomfortable and tight folded over her chest. “Politics…are a different story.” And God, but they are. They are and you’re so sorry. “Even if we supported him, it wouldn’t be enough.” 

Hina wants to say  _what do you mean if_ , but she’s the only one still questioning why it’s a motive to kill. And Taka’s head is still bowed, but it’s not your eyes he won’t meet. He’s avoiding Mondo. “I don’t understand how you fit into this, Mondo,” you admit, but you kind of do. “There wouldn’t have been time for him to ask -”

“I told you, Taka didn’t do -”

“They were set up,” Kyoko interrupts. “That much was true.” She doesn’t go on, touching her chin thoughtfully, and it means her suspicions haven’t met up with evidence. 

Here it comes again, another countdown. You, scrambling to put pieces that don’t fit together. “I know why Toko wanted to call Taka down,” you say, your eyes on the floor, “But why would she want Mondo too? Unless -”

“She didn’t ask him to come.  _I_  did.” His uniform creases where his fingers dig in. It hits you all at once, how young you both are. How young you all are, except Yasuhiro. “I was going to tell him that I couldn’t let my secret get out, and what he thought I should do. So I slipped a note under his door. I guess Toko saw me, and took it. He only came by on accident.” 

You don’t want to tell him. He might have killed someone, but he’s been through so much. You think of what you know: that he’s never had friends, never known how to make them, grappled with a secret that would have isolated him further. He should be allowed to preserve some dignity, some sense of security to die with. 

But if you don’t say it, you know Monokuma will. “Actually,” you bring up a note in neater writing, slipped under the benches in a moment of panic. It’s crumpled at the edges, where fingers too anxious held on too tightly. “Toko did tell Mondo to come. She wasn’t just setting you up to blackmail you -” How do you know this? Why do you have to? “She was setting it up for you to kill each other.” 

It’s more unhappy revelations, one after the other. It’s stale in your mouth when you talk. It’s walking into a room with cigarette air. It’s why she was hiding back in the dark, why she’d had flash on her camera, why the door to the room was left unlocked. “She lured you into the room hoping Mondo would eavesdrop and kill you himself,” Kyoko says. Her eyes aren’t cruel, aren’t kind. “Mondo’s the only one here who didn’t react to your secret, because he already knew what it was.” 

His knuckles kiss the top of his podium, but his eyes look at nothing. It’s the first time in twenty minutes that Taka has looked at his friend, fascinated and betrayed. “So what?” Mondo demands. 

“So what, indeed?” asks Byakuya, marking the first time he’s spoken up all trial. His mouth is too small for the smugness he’s trying to convey. “It means that she told him, but it doesn’t make a difference. He got there intending to kill, and found that his lust for violence had already been satiated by Ishimaru’s murder. Knowing that only one perpetrator could be punished per crime, he settled for cleaning it up.” He crosses his arms, self-satisfied. “It makes little difference, the outcome is still the same.”

But it makes a lot of difference, you want to say, more than anything because his conjecture is so full of holes. The newest rule hadn’t been revealed until the trial, and if Mondo was so ruled by his baser instincts how would something like that get in his way? 

But it matters so much more to Mondo than it does to you, and his voice screams hoarse “You fucking idiot, that’s not why I went there” and collapses on itself. For someone so big, he’s overwhelmed by his surroundings, like an ant under a magnifying glass. 

Sensing her shot, Kyoko latches on. “So Toko didn’t tell you his secret?” 

He shrinks ever inward, Ishimaru’s fire eyes unwavering . “She did,” Mondo says, “Or sort of.” His hand sneaks over his neck, fingers brushing through the loose strands of his hair his cheeks tinted. It feels like…

“Kyoudai,” he says, and Mondo jumps, “What did she tell you?” 

bullying. Kids standing around in a circle, picking on the person who stands out the most. Moss grows on your hands. They are dirty. 

“She said that you…”  _don’t say it don’t say it don’t make this thing real_  “Were in love with me.”

Byakuya’s hands roll out like a preacher. “And there you have it,” he says, “I was right after all. You heard this rumor and couldn’t handle the embarrassment. Toko had you in her trap, but her timing was off -”

“Shut up,” Mondo shouts. “You don’t know jack shit about me, asshole!” 

“Then why were you there?” 

Kyoko, Kyoko, you ask in your head. Why do you you need to know? Aren’t things bad enough as they are? Do we have to tear it apart? It’s the last minutes Taka has before we send him to his death, the last minutes Mondo has before we kill someone he loves. 

Do we really need to expose this? 

His fingers push against the stand and the wood splinters in your head, migraines and stars behind your eyes. You wish this could be anything else, some crime less intimate, some crime less personal. No crime at all, no friends to humiliate. And Ishimaru’s eyes are still red and still steady and you wish that they’d stop, that he’d blink, instead of watching every movement in your friend’s lips when he says  _Because I hoped it was true_. 

Your ears are splitting and Hina is screaming and everything is happening all at once. Monokuma’s lost control of the courtroom but he’s in such ecstasy, such bliss because their hands are reaching out and holding but the gap is too far and they’re not allowed to move or they would. Monokuma is laughing because isn’t this  _funny_ , how things happen; how Taka wouldn’t have felt so desperately alone if he  **knew** , how he wouldn’t have killed if he  **knew** , how he might have had hope if he  **knew**. And you - oh, you feel like strangling that bear, but you are your class’s voice of reason and Hina is first on her way to beating you there. Three lives are now ruined and you don’t know for what. You only know that your ears ache with the echo of a gavel hitting wood. Two men were set up and one woman was killed and another will die and all that you have is one more person who has to live through something they won’t recover from. 

If there is God, if there is one, if there is anything at all up above you - it has no plan. There is only this, and death, and misery around you. 

The room, again, goes black.

**Author's Note:**

> [named for the hozier song of the same name.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXq_J29V5Io)


End file.
